Cool App

SCAVENGER HUNT WITH FRIENDS LITE

Scavenger Hunt with Friends Lite

This application was brought to me by Dr. Merissa Ferrara in the Department of Communication. She uses it in her class on the first day of class to establish a culture of collaboration, creativity, and acceptance. Scavenger Hunt with Friends Lite is an app that allows you to create and participate in scavenger hunts.

Creating a Hunt

It's really easy to create them. Just open the app, click Create New Hunt > Custom Hunt Setup and Name it. You can then add your items. These items will be text-based such as "Center for Student Learning hours." You can then assign points based on how difficult or easy the item is to find. Once you have created the hunt you can invite your teams to play.

Participating in a Hunt

As a participant, just log into the app and you will see the hunt. There will be a list of all of the items in the hunt and the point value. As you locate an item you take a photo of it, preferably with you or your team included, and submit it. You will automatically get the points but both the hunt creator and the other teams will have an opportunity to contest the points if they don't feel the image meets clue. Each team will see the leaderboard to know how they stand and to see what the other teams' photos. It's super easy and the creator can keep track of everyone's progress all of one area.

Uses

Be creative! Scavenger hunts can meet all types of needs.

Teamwork: use a scavenger hunt to start off a big team project. This will help the team gel before they have to work together on the project. It's also a great ice breaker. If it's about teamwork, make sure your clues require a picture of the team doing something together.

Learn about services: use a hunt to help your students learn about services offered by an organization or your school. For a first year experience or for your freshman have the teams go to the different student areas of your school such as the library, the tutoring facilities, the gym, etc. It's a great way for them to become acclimated to a new environment.

Learn about an area: use a scavenger hunt on a field trip to make sure your students locate everything they need to see or learn about on the trip. This is a great pairs activity and it helps keep students on task when away from campus. They can take pictures of plants, historical markers, buildings, etc.

These are just a few ideas. I'm sure you can come up with even more.

Final Thoughts

Scavenger Hunt with Friends Lite is easy to use as both the hunt creator and participant. There are a couple of negatives however:

You do have to create a login and it does require an email address. This may be problematic for younger kids.

You need cell service or wifi to access the app and upload pictures. The workaround for wifi iPads would be to load the list while on campus and have network access or take a screenshot of the list while on the web. You can then take pictures of the items as you locate them using the regular camera on your iPad. Once back with network access you can then attach the pictures to the clues to get your points. Not the best solution but it should work for students without smart phones.

Also, a few additional notes:

The iOS app is an iPhone app. It can be loaded, and works fine, on an iPad but you will need to switch to phone apps when downloading it from the App Store.

Don't try to create a hunt on the website, scavengerhuntwithfriends.com. This appears to be a paid version. You will want to work strictly from the app. You can access both apps from the links above. Also make sure to download the LITE or LT apps, not the paid apps.